The door to the Lebyadkins' place was just closed but not locked, and we walked in freely. Their entire apartment consisted of two ugly little rooms with sooty walls on which the dirty wallpaper hung literally in tatters. There had been a tavern there for a few years, until the owner, Filippov, moved it to his new house. The other rooms once occupied by the tavern were now locked, and these two had fallen to Lebyadkin. The furniture consisted of simple benches and plank tables, except for just one old armchair with a missing arm. In the second room, in the corner, there was a bed with a cotton blanket, which belonged to Mlle. Lebyadkin, while the captain, when he settled down for the night, would collapse each time on the floor, often just as he was. Everywhere there were crumbs, litter, puddles; a big, thick, soaking-wet rag lay in the middle of the floor in the first room, and in the same pool sat an old, worn-out boot. One could see that no one did anything here; no one lit the stoves, cooked the meals; they did not even have a samovar, as Shatov detailed. When the captain arrived with his sister, he was completely destitute and, as Liputin said, went around to certain houses begging; but, having unexpectedly received money, he at once began drinking and went completely off his head from wine, so that he could not be bothered with housekeeping.
Mlle. Lebyadkin, whom I wished so much to see, was sitting placidly and inaudibly in the second room, in the corner, at a wooden kitchen table, on a bench. She did not call out to us when we opened the door, she did not even move from her place. Shatov told me that their door to the front hall even could not be locked, and had once stood wide open for a whole night. By the light of a dim, slender candle in an iron candlestick I made out a woman of perhaps thirty, sickly thin, wearing a dark old cotton dress, her long neck not covered with anything, her scanty dark hair twisted at the nape into a small knot no bigger than a two-year-old child's fist. She looked at us quite gaily. Besides the candlestick, she had on the table before her a small rustic mirror, an old deck of cards, a tattered Songbook, and a little roll of white German bread from which one or two bites had been taken. It was obvious that Mlle. Lebyadkin used white makeup and rouge on her face, and wore lipstick. She also blackened her eyebrows, which were long, thin, and dark even without that. Her narrow and high forehead, in spite of the makeup, was marked rather sharply by three long wrinkles. I knew already that she was lame, but this time she did not get up and walk in our presence. Some time ago, in early youth, this thin face might have been not unattractive; but her quiet, tender gray eyes were remarkable even now; something dreamy and sincere shone in her quiet, almost joyful look. This quiet, serene joy, also expressed in her smile, surprised me after everything I had heard about the Cossack quirt and all the outrages of her dear brother. Strangely, instead of the heavy and even fearful repulsion one usually feels in the presence of such God-afflicted creatures, I found it almost pleasant to look at her from the very first moment, and it was only pity, and by no means repulsion, that came over me afterwards.
'She just sits like that, alone as can be, literally for days on end, without moving; she reads the cards and looks at herself in the mirror,' Shatov pointed to her from the threshold. 'He doesn't even feed her. The old woman brings her something from the wing every once in a while, for the love of Christ. How can they leave her alone like this with a candle!'
To my surprise, Shatov spoke aloud, as if she were not in the room.
'Good evening, Shatushka!' Mlle. Lebyadkin said affably.
'I've brought you a guest, Marya Timofeevna,' said Shatov.
'Honor to the guest, then. I don't know who it is you've brought, I don't seem to remember this one.' She looked at me attentively from behind the candle and at once turned to Shatov again (and concerned herself no further with me during the whole conversation, as if I were not there beside her).
'Got bored, did you, pacing your little garret alone?' she laughed, revealing two rows of excellent teeth.
'Got bored, and I also wanted to come and see you.'
Shatov moved a bench up to the table, sat down, and sat me down beside him.
'I'm always glad for some talk, only you make me laugh anyhow, Shatushka, you're so like a monk. When did you last comb your hair?
Let me comb it again,' she took a comb from her pocket, 'you must not have touched it since I combed it that other time.'
'But I don't even have a comb,' laughed Shatov.
'Really? Then I'll give you mine, not this one, but another, only remind me to do it.'
She began combing his hair with a most serious expression, even parted it on one side, drew back a little to see if it was good, and then put the comb back in her pocket.
'You know what, Shatushka,' she shook her head, 'you may be a sensible man, but you're bored. It's strange for me looking at you all, I don't understand how it is that people are bored. Sorrow isn't boredom. I'm of good cheer.'
'And with your brother, too?'
'You mean Lebyadkin? He's my lackey. It makes no difference to me whether he's here or not. I shout at him: 'Lebyadkin, fetch water, Lebyadkin, bring my shoes,' and off he runs. I sin sometimes thinking how funny he is.'
'And that's exactly so,' Shatov again addressed me aloud and without ceremony, 'she treats him just like a lackey; I myself have heard her shouting at him: 'Lebyadkin, fetch water,' and laughing loudly; the only difference is that he doesn't go running for water, but beats her for it; yet she's not afraid of him in the least. She has some sort of nervous fits almost every day, and they take away her memory, so that after them she forgets everything that's just happened and always gets mixed up about time. You think she remembers how we came in, and maybe she does, but she's certainly changed it all in her own way and takes us for someone other than we are, even if she remembers that I'm Shatushka. It doesn't matter that I'm talking out loud; if the talk isn't addressed to her, she immediately stops listening and immediately plunges into dreaming within herself; precisely plunges. She's an extraordinary dreamer; she sits in one place for eight hours, for a whole day. Here's her roll, she may have taken only one bite of it since morning, and won't finish it until tomorrow. And now she's begun reading the cards...'
'Reading the cards I am, Shatushka, only it comes out wrong somehow,' Marya Timofeevna suddenly joined in, catching the last words, and without looking she reached for the roll with her left hand (having probably heard about the roll, too). She finally got hold of it, but after keeping it for a while in her left hand, being distracted by the newly sprung-up conversation, she put it back on the table without noticing, and without having taken a single bite. 'It keeps coming out the same: a journey, a wicked man, someone's perfidy, a deathbed, a letter from somewhere, unexpected news—it's all lies, I think. Shatushka, what's your opinion? If people lie, why shouldn't cards lie?' She suddenly mixed up the cards. 'It's the same thing I said once to Mother Praskovya, a venerable woman she is, she used to stop by my cell to read the cards, in secret from the mother superior. And she wasn't the only one who stopped by. They'd 'oh' and 'ah,' shake their heads, say one thing and another, and I'd just laugh. 'Mother Praskovya,' I said, 'how are you going to get a letter if it hasn't come for twelve years?' Her daughter's husband took her daughter to Turkey somewhere, and for twelve years there wasn't a word or a peep from her. Only the next day I was sitting in the evening having tea at the mother superior's (and our mother superior is of a princely
